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Some rooms in a home are just better suited for specific seasons. Our library has become our go-to winter spot. Though, I’m still not sure if it should be called a library, study, den, or drawing room?

Drawing room is definitely too snooty. Its reclaimed cherry wood has an inherent warmth… and mystery: we’re not sure where it was reclaimed from. The books add their own density and warmth of stories told. And Alex centered the room with a furry white rug that you just want to put your toes in, or knead if you’re a cat (which Alex calls “making muffins”).

When we bought the house, I thought it was a nice room but I didn’t see us spending much time in there. Of course, I don’t have the vision my wife does, nor the decorating touch.

Being just off the main entrance, we didn’t want to make it an office with a desk and all the mess that entails. Back in the day, I suppose a room like this may have been used as a smoking room, but we don’t smoke. And a TV didn’t seem appropriate.

So on cold afternoons, we grab the book or magazine we’d been meaning to read, close the glass doors with just enough space to let the cats in, turn on the gas fireplace and kick up our feet. The room gets toasty like an oven, and the cats inevitably end up on the rug making muffins.

Maybe it’s the muffin room?

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My wife and I have our own way of communicating. There are words I use with her that only she would understand. We’ve been together so long that grunts have become part of our vocabulary. A quick “grrr,” means “I’m so frustrated I’m over this.”

Mornings start with “bubbly”, and no it’s not what you’re thinking. Bubbly is what I call Alex’s carbonated and flavored water. It’s just easier to say bubbly. Random people we see or run into doing our daily routines have secret nicknames: there’s Slowpoke, Bubba, Crazy-Flower-Lady, Jackass, Wife-of Jackass, etc.

There’s a certain non-verbal dance we do when we approach a grocery checkout line. We both do a quick scan of the amount of items in each cart, age of customer (which usually determines payment type, ergo speed of transaction), and who’s working the register. If it’s Slowpoke at the register, I’ll immediately jump into the line next to us. Alex will notice my move, rescan the situation and either join me, or not, depending on her specific criteria. She’s got the extra burden of coupons, which sometimes supersedes my need for speed.

At home, we have a splash, meaning a glass of wine; the clicky instead of remote for the TV; and the cats are often called babies.

The cats have a whole subset of terms related to them. We have a screened-in porch that let’s our indoor cats be “outside”, which Alex calls the kitten-porch. Another cat-themed term we have is water-cave, which is not somewhere we put them when they’ve been bad. They used to drink our water from the glasses on our nightstand at night, so I found a little wooden box just big enough for a glass of water, turned it on its side, and voila: cat-proofed. I guess it would be better named as a “water-box”, but somehow water-cave stuck, and it is really hard to unstick such a thing.

I can just see one of us years from now, old but totally with it, trying to communicate with someone who thinks we’re going senile, using words that only the two of us would recognize as normal. “Take the bubbly out of the water-cave and find my clicky on the kitten-porch.” “Uh, we’re going to have to up your dose of meds sir.” “Grrrrr.” “Are you growling at me sir?”